Fun Weekend Project

A friend of mine was here showing off some keyboards he picked up at a local thrift shop this morning. He told me about a solid slab table he saw while he was there. It was pretty cheap so I decided to go check it out. The slab looked like it was chainsawed and coated in about 1/8" of some kind of varnish. It happened to be 50% off furniture day so it went from $26 to $13. We grabbed it and took it home. We took a scraper and sander to it so we could check out what was underneath. It looks just like another block of redwood I have so we decided to "process" it. First we cut off the live edges and took it down to about 15" wide, then we ran it through the planer. It was a pretty good find, there are some cool figured burly/flame/birdseye (?) kind of spots. $13 and an hour or work got us a board that roughed down to about 14.5" wide, 60" long and 1.75" thick. This friend just put in an order for a guitar a week or two ago so we'll probably use this for the main body wood. He found it and really likes it so I'm excited to use this for his project.

Worshiper, It was pretty thickly coated and dark, but being in Northern California, the size, coloring and rough cuts pretty much screamed "cheesy redwood table". I didn't know there was any fancy figure there although it did look like the grain was funky. As we were checking out my friend said he could see some kind of weird bug holes. I thought that might be a little suspect since redwood is usually pretty bug resistant. For $13 I would use this for painted bodies if the wood didn't look good so it made sense to pick it up just for fun.

Cool find. I would've bought the board too but never expected to find what you did.

Here's a tip for you guys in California especially but the entire US if you know what you're looking for...

Years ago, redwood was the wood of choice for signmakers to create relief carved and sandblasted signs. Redwood resisted rot, and had the grain structure that blasted well - especially when it was quartersawn. These signs were usually made up from boards that were 8"+ in width and usually 2"+ in thickness. However, they were rarely cut into further than about 1/2". So, if you find old dimensional wood signs that are better than 20 years old, you can bet that they are redwood and you can get some killer stock from them.

My grandma has a huge slab table. It's easily big enough for two bodies or several necks. It's core is burl walnut, and then it has burl maple around the edges. Not big enough for a body, of course, but with a little patience and a steady hand, you could probably get two necks out of it.

My grandma has a huge slab table. It's easily big enough for two bodies or several necks. It's core is burl walnut, and then it has burl maple around the edges. Not big enough for a body, of course, but with a little patience and a steady hand, you could probably get two necks out of it.

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You don't want to use any kind of burl for necks. To unstable, and low in strength. Unless perhaps Larry from Gallery acrylized it for you.

Yep, that's me Bud. Ian's girlfriend took that pic and I think she changed modes in the middle of a picture. The image got all messed up and made me look 8 feet tall or something. I think Ian is around 6' and I'm 6'3".

Most the bigger power tools in my shop are green. I'd like to be able to afford some nicer stuff someday but the longer I own these I realize I probably wont need much more.

Yep, that's me Bud. Ian's girlfriend took that pic and I think she changed modes in the middle of a picture. The image got all messed up and made me look 8 feet tall or something. I think Ian is around 6' and I'm 6'3".

Most the bigger power tools in my shop are green. I'd like to be able to afford some nicer stuff someday but the longer I own these I realize I probably wont need much more.

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Nothing wrong with the green stuff. Have you tried the Wood Slicer blades?